Apparently the Uzbek Wikipedia has been blocked in Uzbekistan, but no one's sure why. It's full of useless trivia and nothing there seems threatening Islam Karimov(T-H-L-K-D)'s regime. Ironically, Uzbeks will now go to the unbanned Russian Wikipedia which has more critical articles about Karimov.

I have a suspicion that what prompted the Wikipedia ban at the end of the January was the addition, on January 24, of the following entries: “seks”, “penis”, “gey”, and “jinsiy aloqa” (sexual relations), which come complete with helpful illustrations. This would be in keeping with the government’s aversion to overt sexual content, which they believe threatens national values.

From what know of that country I have no reason at all to doubt this. What they would make of Donkey Punch I am boggled by!

From what know of that country I have no reason at all to doubt this. What they would make of Donkey Punch I am boggled by!

Only Donkey Punch?

The following memes may be remembered as they were appropriately illustrated: Fisting, X-Lingus, Semen, Smotherbox, Pedophilia, Pederasty, Boylove, Girllove, Greek love, Age of consent, Spanking, Panchira, Lolicon, Shotacon, Futanari, Moe.

Don't forget snowballing (sexual practice). Apparently Wikipedia will become as censored as North Korea if any fascist prude dare to remove the article's gag-worthy image, because apparently reading about what it means isn't enough, the article needs to be "enhanced" with visual assistance.

The amusing thing is that the infamous Goatse image got the boot on the article of the same name, yet unorthodox sexual practices are liberally supplied with amateur photographs or art. I guess that's because there was no Wikipedian alliance of anal fisters or whatever guarding the Goatse article. I'm sure if some wanted to do so they could portray the article as the victimization of an otherwise brave anal fister and that the removal of this hero's photo constitutes homophobia and/or anti-fisting bias.

This post has been edited by Mister Die: Fri 24th February 2012, 11:04am

The amusing thing is that the infamous Goatse image got the boot on the article of the same name, yet unorthodox sexual practices are liberally supplied with amateur photographs or art. I guess that's because there was no Wikipedian alliance of anal fisters or whatever guarding the Goatse article. I'm sure if some wanted to do so they could portray the article as the victimization of an otherwise brave anal fister and that the removal of this hero's photo constitutes homophobia and/or anti-fisting bias.

Wait a minute, are we talking about the English Wikipedia now, or the Uzbek Wikipedia?

Here it is useful to look not only at what is being censored, but where – because the question of “where” content exists online is more complex for regimes that derive their power from narrow definitions of nationalism. Uzbekistan’s ban on Wikipedia has less to do with blocking access to information than it does with territorializing an ambiguous Uzbek ethnolinguistic virtual space. As I argued in a 2010 article, the Uzbeki government views the Internet as a virtual extension of its sovereign dominion, and sees Uzbek-language content as subject to its jurisdiction. Under this logic, state intervention is more justified when Uzbeks write encyclopedia entries in Uzbek than it is when Uzbeks read encyclopedia entries in Russian, because those entries do not lie on the state’s ethnically demarcated virtual “territory”.

What this writer fails to take note of is that the Uzbeks were, during the Soviet era, victims of some of the worst - and I daresay the most brutal - acculturation and forced-assimilation policies the world has ever seen. Worse even than what Tibet is suffering now... What we here in the West think of as "censorship" in this case is, to the Uzbeks, truly a matter of national survival.

Mind you, I'm not saying that the Wikimedia Foundation should keep their grubby mitts off of the Uzbeki encyclopedia market, though that would probably be appreciated by most of the older Uzbeki population. I am saying that they should try to have some people around who are aware of these things, and make some attempt to understand why certain countries behave the way(s) they do towards them.